John Parkinson

I have always believed that knowledge management wasn't something you did, but rather something you got when you did a whole slew of other things right.

I also believe that the key enablers are a subtle combination of culture, process and technology, which makes it just about impossible to build a KM "product" or even a KM "platform." Many places I have worked or consulted disagreed and spent lots of resources and dollars on KM efforts that delivered neither knowledge nor management to any appreciable degree.

In the few places that listened and believed, I saw some modest successes, but the culture factor is really hard to "engineer." And without that factor you tend to get better collaboration and isolated pockets of excellence, but not the Holy Grail.

And KM "success" is pretty hard to define and harder to measure. Plus, there are few instant wins, so you also have to be lucky early to get enough momentum going and last long enough to be merely good later. It's a tough problem.

... approach of building the right cultural context (share ideas freely), the right processes (modeled on small, collaborative, research teams and constant interactions) and a judicious investment in technology ...